There was a time when the beginning of an academic season brought parents and students to the series of bookstalls in Koti, Hyderabad. They used to wait for their turn for new textbooks, second-hand sets. The school season began this year. The books and sellers are there at the counter, but the crowd is thin. This has been so for over a decade now.

Ranjeet Gunjote has run his bookstall here for as long as he can remember as his father owned the place before. In the past, people would come in with booklists, reading out titles while their children waited. Now, those lists rarely show up. Many schools tell parents to buy from a single store linked to a specific publisher, where they must purchase the full set. Ranjeet still has unsold books from previous school seasons on his shelves. “We were their go-to place,” he says. “Now we are their last choice.”

Sold out by evening

He remembers when things were different. Whether it was engineering, medicine, law, or other courses, students in Hyderabad came to Koti for what they needed. The lanes would get so crowded that people used to stand on the main road. Over time, authorities had to set aside space for the market. Books that arrived in the morning would be sold out by evening.

Ranjeet is not the only one. Across Koti, footfall has dropped by nearly half of what it was a few years ago.

Mohd. Asif Ahmed has worked at Star Book Center for over twenty years. He started as a helper, then bought the shop, and paid for his own education by selling second-hand books. Some families who once relied on his shop still visit, but their children usually don’t come along. Now, people can order the same books online, often for less money and with faster delivery. Even when new curriculums make some books impossible to sell, Asif says he still loves his work and hopes students will someday find a balance between screens and printed pages.

The regulars

But some people still come. Some travel from villages, trusting the bookstore they know best. Long-time customers bring their children’s friends who are starting to prepare for exams, much like sharing a family recipe. For families without easy access to smartphones, Asif still helps them choose what to buy and tells them the right price, sometimes letting them pay in installments. Others come for a different reason: UPSC aspirants who avoid their phones, seeing screens as distractions. They don’t just buy books from him, they ask for advice on what to read and what to skip. For them, Asif is more than a shopkeeper; he’s part of their journey.

Time, weight and commute

It’s clear why students have changed their habits. Medical students, for instance, had to carry heavy books and equipment. Now they are inclined to carry the books in the form of PDFs in electronic devices instead. Pranay Kumar, now doing his M.S. at Osmania Medical College, used to rely on Koti during his MBBS days. But now he doesn’t need to as much. When he visited a shop mid-semester, the bookseller was surprised to see him and said students now only come during exam season. Rahul Ramagiri, who is preparing for the UPSC and was a regular to the bookstalls, says online resources save both time and travel.

Adapting to the change

Koti has always been more than a place to buy books. It is where people came without a list too and left with something they didn’t know they needed. Mohd. Ali’s Best Book Center has been open since 1984 and still has original books from the British era, including rare titles you can’t find anywhere else. But even rare books don’t bring in crowds like they used to. People once came in without a plan and left with something unexpected. “They would pick up a book and only then find out it was a national bestseller,” Ali says. Now, algorithms decide what people see before they even get curious. He sensed this change well before and launched a website for his store, partnering with Amazon to stay updated. Some sellers have stopped selling books and now sell stationery to stay afloat.

Academics see effects that go beyond just the market. Usha Raman, a retired professor, remembers when Koti changed from selling books to CDs, DVDs, and then electronics, with fewer stores each time. She says digital reading happens in a world full of distractions, with open tabs and notifications, while a physical book asks you to focus. She also points out that Koti still helps students who can’t easily get online, and for them, a second-hand book at half price is a necessity, not just nostalgia. 

Prasheel Anand, a visiting faculty member at the University of Hyderabad, calls it a shift in patience, or maybe a loss of it. He says education has become more streamlined and commercial, and students now read without stopping to think. For him, Koti’s empty lanes are also a loss of space. There was a time when two strangers who liked the same book might argue over the last copy and leave as friends. That kind of connection was something the market quietly created.

Koti is still here. It has changed where it could and stayed the same where it had to. The books remain, along with the people whose lives are built around them. But the city has become quicker and less patient. Whether it has really moved forward or just moved on is a question these lanes have been asking for a while. 

(The writer is an intern at The Hindu, Hyderabad)